Jewish Community – Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics
An examination of religion's role and the ethical dimensions behind top news headlines.Wed, 05 Apr 2017 14:50:31 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaismhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/05/10/may-10-2013-leaving-ultra-orthodox-judaism/18423/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/05/10/may-10-2013-leaving-ultra-orthodox-judaism/18423/#disqus_threadFri, 10 May 2013 22:01:58 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=16364A support group called Footsteps is providing counsel to those who have chosen to leave the confines of the ultra-Orthodox world in which they were raised. More →

LUCKY SEVERSON: They live conspicuously pious lives in a secular world, especially in enclaves and suburbs of New York. Ultra Orthodox Hasidic Jews observe the strict rules of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and its 613 commandments.

Their structured lifestyle seems to work for the majority. But, for some, the lack of choices is too rigid, so they choose to leave, even though doing so can be very painful. Hasidic groups remain some of the most insular religious sects in the U.S. Sol Feuerwerker knows, he was one of them.

SOL FEUERWERKER: I think that’s what surprises most people, you know, most outsiders, is that how can something this insular be happening right here in the middle of New York City. You know, as I’ve moved farther away from it, it kind of shocks me too actually.

CHANI GETTER: When I tell people that I grew up 30 miles north of New York, that I went into the city and I had never seen a movie before I was in my 20s, they think I’m insane.

SEVERSON: Chani Getter grew up, married and had three children before she broke away from her Hasidic community. Those who leave Hasidism paint a picture of a very puritanical and sheltered way of life.

GETTER: When I left, I moved into my own apartment and I started driving, and as a woman who was driving, my parents disowned me. In our sect, women did not drive. And so, for eight years, they didn’t talk to me.

SEVERSON: In Hebrew, the word Hasidim translates to mean the “pious ones.” They are defined by their devotion to a hereditary leader known as the “Rebbe”, by their distinctive clothing and Yiddish language. Professor Samuel Heilman is a Jewish scholar at Queens College.

PROFESSOR SAMUEL HEILMAN: They have everything that makes up a culture, social norms, language, a career pattern in life. Even the ones who leave say that there are aspects of their lives that they left behind that they miss. To go to a Hasidic gathering and to sing the songs and to dance in the circle and to be enfolded into the community, and to hear your voice in a chorus of other voices. This is a tremendously exciting experience and when you leave and you’re all alone, all alone in the city…

SEVERSON: Professor Heilman says there are as many as 350 thousand Hasidic Orthodox in the U.S. and Canada, and an even larger population in Israel. And the numbers are increasing fast, he says, because Hasidism strongly encourages very large families.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: They don’t believe in birth control. They believe that the commandment of “be fruitful and multiply” is incumbent upon all Jewish people and they practice it. Not only do they have large families but they are the poorest of all Jews because they don’t go to college, so they lack often some of the skills that are necessary for high income. They are all literate in Jewish education, but their secular education is limited. That is not to say there are not some who are successful…in the diamond business, electronics business, in trading on Wall Street.

SEVERSON: Relatively few leave, in professor Heilman’s view, because they’ve been taught to shun the secular world.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: They’ve been told that the world outside their own is demonic, corrosive, dangerous, they wouldn’t want to be part of it, that they live a superior kind of life.

GETTER: One of the things that they teach you is that we get to choose what we allow our eyes to see. We get to choose what we allow our ears to hear. And so when you go into the city, you make a conscious choice not to allow your eyes to see.

FEUERWERKER: There’s this whole, like belief or narrative in the community that if you, if you try to break away or change you will fail and you won’t be happy and you’ll just end up on drugs.

SEVERSON: Lani Santo is the Executive Director of a non-profit group called Footsteps, founded in 2003, not to proselytize but to provide counsel and support to those who want to explore life outside the confines of the world in which they were raised. They’ve assisted over 700 altogether so far, a majority are young men.

LANI SANTO: We are seeing a lot more, just in this year alone, we’ve seen a 60% increase in our membership and in new people coming to us, and that’s compared to a 35% increase that we’ve been on for the last few years.

SEVERSON: In the past, it was easier to shelter those in ultra religious communities from the outside world. Television, magazines, radio, even libraries were off limits. Then along came the internet.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: The internet is a real problem for them. There has been, there have been efforts, for example there was a recent gathering at Citi Field here in New York that was against the internet. But it’s a case of trying to close the barn after the horses are out.

SEVERSON: Lani Santo says those who do leave suffer serious bouts of loneliness and guilt.

SANTO: It’s more about guilt in terms of impacting their families. If they have younger siblings, the fact that they’re leaving is putting at risk the marriage prospects for their younger siblings and that’s a real challenge.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: Marriage is critical. And it’s all by matchmaking. Finding single people in this community is rare, and if they’re single then it means they’re problematic…and problematic can be that you have someone in the family who’s not Orthodox or that there’s some mental or physical ailment in the family or that there are, it can even be somebody has too many people with red hair in the family.

SANTO: Any mark of difference is a mark of shame. So whether it’s a mark of having a child that’s leaving the community, whether it’s a mark of having a child that’s sexually abused or whether there’s some sort of ailment in the family, um, or someone who’s committed suicide, all of that will be covered up.

MICHAEL JENKINS: The first thing that really struck me was the courage in the room.

SEVERSON: Michael Jenkins is Footsteps’ senior social worker. He says he’s amazed at the risks young Hasidim are taking by even walking through the front door. He conducts group therapy and private counseling, says a number of people he meets with lead dual and deeply conflicted lives, with one foot in their Hasidic community and one foot out.

JENKINS: There’s things in the community that I love, that work for me, family, friendships, relationships … this is where I’ve always been and this is where I want to be, yet there are things that I disagree with…and I want to be able to talk about that or express that somewhere else.

FOOTSTEPS GROUP DISCUSSION: “I want to be who I want to be. And if I find God, I find God on my own, you know? I don’t go any more according to what I was told as a kid.”

SEVERSON: In Hasidic communities, young men study the Torah in Hebrew at least 7 hours a day and spend only one hour on secular education. So those who leave are woefully unprepared to go out on their own. Sol was 19 when he broke away.

(to Feuerwerker): What was your education level at that point?

FEUERWERKER: If I had to estimate it would probably be, you know 4th or 5th grade.

SEVERSON: Was that pretty standard for most of the men of your age?

FEUERWERKER: That’s the norm, yeah. And in fact I believe I was actually a little bit more advanced than some of my friends at the time.

SEVERSON: Another consequence of the insularity is that if a crime is committed, it often goes unreported.

FEUERWERKER: I have many friends, men and women who have been abused, sexually, physically, emotionally…

SEVERSON: Sol is now in his 4th year as a pre-med student. He says it hasn’t been easy. Some old friends speak to him, some don’t. He says he has a message for others who are worried about leaving the sheltered world of Hasidism.

FEUERWERKER: My point is it’s challenging and it looks really, really scary at the beginning. Um, but it’s, it’s possible.

SEVERSON: Chani Getter says Footsteps has made leaving the Hasidic community a little less scary.

GETTER: Since Footsteps opened the thing that I saw different is that when people used to leave the community before it would be through alcohol and drugs. In order for them to leave, they had to become a total outcast.

SEVERSON: When Chani left, her parents were traumatized, and then she announced that she is gay. Now she’s studying to be a rabbi.

GETTER: They’re hurt by the fact that I will not live, you know, that kind of life, because my soul is in danger. And yet they don’t understand why my eyes sparkle and why I’m so happy.

SEVERSON: As the world continues to shrink because of access to modern technology, like the internet, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for anyone or any group to shield their families from the outside world.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/05/10/may-10-2013-samuel-heilman-extended-interview/18422/feed/3 Shanghai Jewish Ghettohttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/04/20/april-20-2012-shanghai-jewish-ghetto/10804/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/04/20/april-20-2012-shanghai-jewish-ghetto/10804/#disqus_threadFri, 20 Apr 2012 19:15:26 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=10804For Holocaust Remembrance Day we talk with Ilie Wacs and Deborah Strobin, a brother and sister who have written a memoir about their family’s life as Jewish refugees in the Far East during World War II and their connection to the larger Jewish story of survival and endurance. More →

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Coming to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. is often a deeply emotional experience for Deborah Strobin and her older brother Ilie Wacs. Here, they relive their own memories of World War Two…memories they were reluctant to share out loud, until recently.

DEBORAH STROBIN, co-author, An Uncommon Journey: I just didn’t really want to talk about it. And neither one of us cared to just be out there.

STROBIN: I mean, if someone would have told me this many years ago, I would never have thought that would happen.

LAWTON: But now, they are indeed sharing, in a new book called, “An Uncommon Journey,” which describes their family’s flight from Vienna to Shanghai and ultimately to America. Their experiences, they’ve come to realize, are part of the larger Jewish story.

WACS: It is important to tell that story. It is on the periphery of the Holocaust, actually, what happened in Europe. However, it is still a story.

LAWTON: The story begins in Vienna. Their father, a tailor, had been a deserter from the Romanian army, so the Austrian government considered him “stateless.” In 1938, when Ilie was 11, Hilter’s Nazi army marched in, annexing Austria.

WACS: Hitler was welcomed with open arms. People threw flowers at him. It was called the war of the flowers, the blumenkrieg. And I remember to this day the troops marching for endless hours through Vienna and the tanks, the goosestepping. And the people cheering Hitler. I was very angry. I was very angry at the Austrians. How could they have changed so quickly? Overnight, within 24 hours. It was mostly anger. The fear came later.

LAWTON: Then in November 1938 came a series of attacks on Jewish-owned businesses and synagogues known as Kristallnacht or night of the broken glass. A non-Jewish friend convinced the family they needed to leave. But their father’s papers were questionable, and countries like the US had very strict entry requirements.

LAWTON: However, for many years, Shanghai had been designated a “treaty port” where foreign nationals could live and trade on Chinese soil.

WACS: Shanghai was the only place in the entire world that had no visa requirement. Nothing. All you had to do is book passage. So, out of desperation, we had to leave. We chose Shanghai. Nobody really wanted to come to Shanghai, but it was the only place to go.

LAWTON: The Wacs family was able to secure passage on an Italian luxury liner.

WACS: The boat was called the Conte Biancamane.

LAWTON: The family boarded the ship in Genoa, Italy on August 16th, 1939, just two weeks before World War Two started. Ilie was 12 and Deborah, just three years old.

STROBIN: I was told—and I don’t believe I remember that at age three but—I remember getting a sense of going on this happy vacation. But that’s all I remember basically. They were trying to protect me.

WACS: There was a Russian Jewish community who came to Shanghai right after the revolution in 1917 and 18. Then there was a Sephardic Jewish community, they were known as the Baghdadi Jews. So when we got to Shanghai, there was already a Jewish community there who could help us settle up.

LAWTON: The family found a tiny apartment in the poorest section of the city, which was already occupied by the Japanese. Ilie, a budding artist, did sketches of their surroundings. Their father got some work as a tailor, but it was difficult to make a living.

WACS: It was a hard life in Shanghai. It was a very difficult life. Food was scarce. Our main occupation, thinking, was about food. When are we going to eat again? Nevertheless, there was a vibrant community in Shanghai, 18,000 of us. There was theater, there were newspapers.

LAWTON: Things got much more difficult after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, and Asia became a major front in the war.

WACS: The Germans kept pushing the Japanese, ‘what are you doing about solving the Jewish problem?’ All the Japanese did, they put us in a ghetto. So they treated us well during the war. Sort of treated us well. They didn’t kill us, right?

LAWTON: Deborah says she didn’t really understand what was happening, or why. Ilie, on the other hand, saw it as an adventure.

STROBIN: He was always fearless.

WACS: Yeah, well, it didn’t…

STROBIN: I had fear.

WACS: I know.

STROBIN: I was frightened all the time.

WACS: You were frightened all the time.

STROBIN: Completely. I still am.

WACS: You still are. I was not.

STROBIN: But, but he was fearless. I mean, I remember when the bombs came, I mean when the planes came. And we could actually tell the difference between the Japanese planes and the American planes. There was a difference. And I remember the sound of it and I remember my mother yelling we must go down in the basement. He didn’t want to move. He wasn’t finished sketching.

LAWTON: Finally in 1945, after the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese left Shanghai, and the Americans liberated the ghetto. Jubilation however, was short-lived. They had heard rumors that bad things were happening to Jews in Europe, but they had no idea that six million had been killed.

WACS: It was really a very difficult time. On the one hand, we were happy the war was over. And then when we found out what had happened in Europe, that none of our family had survived, most of the families had not survived, and it was quite terrible. It was quite shocking.

LAWTON: The Jewish community in Shanghai survived largely intact. The Wacs family and many others finally started making their way to America, where they began a new life. Both Ilie and Deborah eventually got married and had children. Ilie became a successful fashion designer. Deborah became a fundraiser and served as deputy chief of protocol for the City of San Francisco. They didn’t talk about what had happened in Shanghai.

Then, for his 70th birthday, Ilie wanted to visit the Holocaust Museum. Deborah reluctantly came along. And there, they saw a photo of three small children in the Shanghai ghetto. Deborah was the one on the left.

STROBIN: At first it was hard to look at the picture, to be quite honest. I mean, at first I didn’t know what I was looking at even though I know it was me, but it didn’t quite penetrate. I was concentrating more on the eyes. And I kept thinking, they look so sad. And then I realized, that was me. That sad little girl, she was actually looking back at me.

LAWTON: She remembered the day the photo was taken. The three had been playing in the park when a Japanese soldier told them to sit and smile.

STROBIN: We found out later on, obviously much later on, that there was a propaganda picture taken. They were looking for three children that were clean and didn’t look—and looked somewhat healthy. We weren’t, but we looked it.

LAWTON: Seeing that photo planted the seed to find out more about what had really happened in Shanghai. They went through their parents’ old documents, which Ilie still had stashed away. He donated the papers to the Holocaust Museum, but first, he made copies of the images and incorporated them in a series of paintings.

LAWTON: They decided to write a memoir from each of their perspectives because they felt a responsibility to bear witness to what had happened, especially for future generations.

STROBIN: Since I didn’t know anything, it didn’t seem fair for my children not to know anything either. They needed to know. My grandkids need to know.

LAWTON: Writing the book, they say, helped them to see how fortunate they were to survive. And even more than that, they say it connected them to the greater Jewish experience.

WACS: I’m not a very observant Jew, but I feel connected to the history of Judaism.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/04/20/april-20-2012-shanghai-jewish-ghetto/10804/feed/2 Deborah Strobin and Ilie Wacs Extended Interviewhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/04/20/april-20-2012-deborah-strobin-and-ilie-wacs-extended-interview/10805/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/04/20/april-20-2012-deborah-strobin-and-ilie-wacs-extended-interview/10805/#disqus_threadFri, 20 Apr 2012 19:10:40 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=10805Watch more of Kim Lawton’s interview with a sister and brother who describe how their family survived World War II in a Jewish ghetto in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. More →

]]>Watch more of Kim Lawton’s interview with Deborah Strobin and Ilie Wacs, co-authors of An Uncommon Journey: From Vienna to Shanghai to America, a Brother and Sister Escape to Freedom During World War II. They describe their memories of living in Shanghai, an incident when American planes accidentally dropped a bomb in the Jewish ghetto, and the impact of those times on their lives.

]]>The question of whether to ordain gay clergy has challenged and divided many denominations, including Conservative Jews. The Orthodox strongly oppose gay ordination, but reform Jews accept it. Now, the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has recommended that Conservative seminaries should be allowed to admit gays.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2007/02/02/february-2-2007-conservative-jews-and-gays/18386/feed/0 Jew v. Jewhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2001/02/21/february-2-2001-jew-v-jew/15737/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2001/02/21/february-2-2001-jew-v-jew/15737/#disqus_threadWed, 21 Feb 2001 18:25:44 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=15737
SAMUEL FREEDMAN: Tenafly, New Jersey, is a suburb of 16,000 people, nearly half of them Jewish, just across the Hudson River from New York City. They are mostly affluent professionals who were drawn by the town’s public schools, nature preserves, … More →

SAMUEL FREEDMAN: Tenafly, New Jersey, is a suburb of 16,000 people, nearly half of them Jewish, just across the Hudson River from New York City. They are mostly affluent professionals who were drawn by the town’s public schools, nature preserves, and ethnic mix. But when a group of Orthodox Jewish newcomers put up a symbolic boundary called an eruv, Tenafly became one of the latest battlegrounds in an ongoing civil war in the American Jewish community.

WENDY KLEIN (Tenafly resident): I am concerned that a message not be sent that this town is only appropriate for people of a certain religion.

JONATHAN SINGER (Tenafly resident): I believe in Tenafly that there must be some fear of strangers or people that are different.

CHAIM BOOK (Tenafly resident): I have a right just like any other citizen in a town of my choosing.

FREEDMAN: The larger debate is about the nature of Jewish life in America. The Orthodox often view the non-Orthodox as overly assimilated; the non- Orthodox tend to view the Orthodox [as] rigid and separatist. And, as the Orthodox leave close-knit urban neighborhoods for the suburbs, where less-observant Jews have long resided, a collision ensues.

STEVE BAYME (American Jewish Committee): The survey data on Orthodox Jews is remarkable. Fifty one, 52% feel the Orthodox are narrow-minded, feel that they are dismissive of non-Orthodox Jews, contemptuous of non-Orthodox Judaism.

FREEDMAN: Chaim Book and his family are part of the recent influx of Orthodox Jews to Tenafly. Two summers ago, without the town’s permission, this group of about 15 families erected an eruv around much of Tenafly. Almost invisible, the eruv was created by arranging for rubber strips to be attached to existing telephone poles and power lines. By symbolically extending the boundaries of a home to the entire enclosure, the eruv allows Orthodox Jews to engage in some activities normally forbidden on the Sabbath.

Mr. BOOK: The eruv is necessary and important for us because it serves a rather mundane purpose. It allows us to push a stroller to synagogue on the Sabbath, it allows us to carry items in the street, it allows a family to attend services together, and visit friends together.

FREEDMAN: But Tenafly’s Borough Council — in a unanimous decision — ordered the eruv to be taken down late last year. Now, the Orthodox community has sued and the case is in federal court. The legal issue is whether a town must accommodate this religious practice.

Ms. KLEIN: It’s troubling to me that a particular religious group would be asking the government to get involved to erect the eruv, which has a religious purpose. It sets a dangerous precedent that the next time another group comes along that the town finds that it also has to grant that accommodation or be accused of discrimination.

Mr. BOOK: What special accommodation is there in allowing black weather-stripping to [be] put up on a telephone pole, when the utilities have given permission to use the telephone pole and the group has given its own funds to pay for it.

WALTER LESNEVICH (borough attorney, Tenafly): Our council looked at our town, our position, our make up, and decided it was not a good thing for the town.

FREEDMAN: But the legal issue is not the most divisive one.

Ms. KLEIN: One of the things that has bothered me and has bothered other people in town is that the eruv people have acted as if the desire or lack of desire for the eruv to be erected was immaterial. It was felt that the eruv proponents were not acting as good members of the community. …

MURRAY MELTZER: I think that anyone who has spoken out against the eruv has been viewed as being anti-Semitic and in some way bigoted. And I find that a divisive atmosphere rather than an accepting atmosphere.

FREEDMAN: These fears are only exacerbated by the fact that Tenafly’s residents have watched the Jewish populations of nearby towns like Englewood and Teaneck become predominantly Orthodox. Such families, which use religious schools, have [a] less[er] stake in public education, and downtown businesses increasingly cater to an Orthodox clientele.

Mr. SINGER: There have been various comments on how the eruv would bring a greater influx of Orthodox to Tenafly, and by having an eruv and by having more Orthodox, it would affect the stores, there would be maybe more stores that wouldn’t be open on Saturday. It would change the tone of the town, and the fact that the Orthodox wouldn’t send their kids to public schools so that it would harm the public schools, and I just think that those sort of statements seem very discriminatory.

Mr. BOOK: My wife and I very easily could have purchased a home and moved into a neighborhood that was perceived as an Orthodox neighborhood, but we are the type of people that feel that we don’t want to live only with people exactly like us and would feel comfortable in a more diverse community, and the reason we moved to this community is because it is a diverse community.

Mr. BAYME: The question that the Orthodox Jews should confront and must confront is the larger issue, not of whether their specific demands or specific requests regarding an eruv or synagogue or zoning ordinance, the real question is the nature of relations between the Jewish people.

FREEDMAN: Ultimately, a court will decide the legality of the eruv. What it can’t possibly resolve is the conflict wracking the Jewish community. Tenafly is only the latest staging ground for this continuing battle between two ways of Jewish life, one celebrating the melting pot, the other devoted to religious tradition.